


Used

by thegraytigress



Series: Letting Go [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Drama, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 11:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3248399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegraytigress/pseuds/thegraytigress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has never felt so used. If she's the only one protecting Steve's legacy, then so be it. She knows she can do it. Filler for "The Blitzkrieg Button".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Used

**Author's Note:**

> **DISCLAIMER:** _Captain America: The First Avenger_ is the property of Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Studios, and Marvel Studios. _Marvel's Agent Carter_ is the property of ABC Studios, Walt Disney Studios, and Marvel Studios. This work was created purely for enjoyment. No money was made, and no infringement was intended.
> 
>  **RATING:** T (language, adult themes)
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is the second story of three about Peggy grieving for Steve during _Agent Carter_ , the first being "Not Often" and the last being "A Second Chance". "The Blitzkrieg Button" was awesome. Made my blood boil a little. Steve/Peggy all the way. Enjoy.

Steve’s blood.  He’s been trying to reclaim Steve’s blood.

_Howard, you bastard._

Peggy has never felt so… so… _used._

And by someone she trusted.  Granted, Howard is perhaps not worthy of her trust.  Certainly everyone has been telling her that.  He’s arrogant, rich, and has demonstrated on numerous occasions that he cares only about himself, about making himself _richer_.  His excuses about using the super soldier serum locked in Steve’s blood to fix the world, to develop cures for deadly diseases, to save hurting children and suffering invalids and…  _The gall!_ To actually say to her that Steve would have wanted this, that Steve would have gladly done anything to save anyone, to use who Steve was against her like that.  Howard knows how to hurt her, how to manipulate her.  He knows he can do that because he knows he’s right.  Steve would have offered himself up to the good of medical science in a heartbeat if he thought it was necessary.  He would have let the government and Stark Industries drain him dry of every drop of blood in his body if he believed it could help those who need help.  And Howard knows that.  He knows the power in that.  _“Steve Rogers may not still be with us, but he can still save millions of people.”_

_You unbelievable bastard._

He used her feelings against her.  He plied her love for Steve _against_ her, tried to wield it like his own shield, something to mislead her into doing what he desired.  So badly she wants to think that Howard is a good man, that he’s worthy of being Steve’s friend, but clearly he’s not.  He’s just like everyone else, all too eager to forget who Steve really was.  Through all of this, all of the lies and the conspiracy theories and listening to her co-workers brand Stark a dirty traitor…  She’s tried to stand fast.  To hold again the mounting incriminating evidence.  She’s tried to be so certain that what she’s been doing for Howard, becoming a traitor herself for Howard’s sake, hasn’t been part of some grand scheme for Stark Industries to fill its already expansive coffers with more gold.  She has tried and tried to keep that faith, to justify undermining her colleagues, breaking the law, running around like she’s an enemy of the state rather than its ally…  _A traitor._   And it’s all for nothing, because Howard used her to steal the one thing she would never have stolen had she known what she was doing.  The one thing she would _never_ allow to fall into the hands of those who would misuse and exploit it.  Steve’s blood.

_You lying bastard!_

She’s running back to her flat and making very little effort to appear like she’s not.  The _thud thud_ of her heels in the hallway is thunderous, just like the _thud thud_ of her anguished heart.  Booming and echoing.  She reaches her door, unlocks it with a hand that shakes with equal parts grief and rage, and walks inside.  As much as she doesn’t want to admit it, having Howard come to her a few weeks ago…  That felt good.  It was wonderful, validating, to have someone trust in her.  To see that someone believes in her.  To know someone _needs_ her for more than simply answering telephones, filling out and filing paperwork, and collecting lunch orders.  Perhaps she’s been blind because of that.  That desire to have something driving her, to possess a renewed purpose in the wake of everything she’s lost, to be useful and trusted is so glorious that maybe it has clouded her vision so catastrophically that she has forgotten fundamental truths.  Howard may have been right with them during the war, aiding SSR in its fight against HYDRA, contributing to the Allied effort, designing equipment for and outfitting the Howling Commandos, putting himself in danger when he didn’t need to…  Going with her to fly Steve behind enemy lines when no one else would.  Perhaps he acted the hero, but that’s all it was.  An act.  _How could I have been so stupid?_   Above anything else, at his _core_ , Howard was a weapons contractor.  He was a business man.  A successful businessman created profit.  Howard built an empire, a legacy, devoted to doing just that: manufacturing profit.  What is it he said?  He knew how to get what he needed in order to make money.

Steve’s blood.

_“You used me!  You lied to me!”_

_“I knew how much Steve meant to you because I know how much he means to me.”_

She’s past wanting to vent her fathomless rage.  Past wanting to hit him.  It felt good to do it, but it didn’t do much more than take the edge off her pain.  All of this created more questions than it answered.  Howard is perhaps greedy, but could he be really this mastermind of evil SSR considered him to be?  How deep does his duplicity run?  Did he really steal his own inventions?  And is Edwin Jarvis another tool Howard is using and manipulating to his own ends, or is his heart more treasonous than he claims?

And what if this isn’t about developing vaccines and treatments for the deadliest of humanity’s diseases and defects?  What if Howard plans to experiment on Steve’s blood to make weapons?  That is what he does.  Build weapons.  There’s no chance to make more of the super soldier serum; Doctor Erskine told her once before he died that the serum would fundamentally alter Steve, become part of him.  That was why it had been so essential to find the right man to be its recipient.  But what if Howard can find a way?  Is that vial more than just another potential cash cow for Stark Industries?  What if he’s intending to use it to recreate the serum?  The ultimate weapon.  In Steve’s hands, it was a tool for good, because _Steve_ was fundamentally and unequivocally good.  He was the best man Peggy’s ever known.  Good and pure and strong and brave and…  _I’m not going to cry.  Not now._   In Steve’s hands, the serum was a shield.  In Howard’s…  In _anyone_ else’s…  _“Since when has the US military ever had a weapon that they didn’t use?”_

_Since when have you?_

He used her.  She trusted him, and he _used_ her.

She blinks back the tears, refuses to even acknowledge them.  She collects herself because she has a task that needs doing.  She quells the waves of pain battering her.  _Focus._   She focuses.  She walks toward her desk.  She turns the radio on, turns it on loud, tuning it to band music that blares through her flat.  Her neighbors may notice, may complain, but she doesn’t care; she’ll gladly endure the reprimand from Ms. Fry.  Sliding off her bag and stripping off her coat, she sets them to the bed.  She pulls the painting off the wall.  Then she stands, because her eyes are suddenly burning again.  Angry, hateful tears that she continues to blink back because she has cried her fill over Steve and she will _not_ cry over what Howard has done and she _will not cry_ for herself.  Not for how she’s been dismissed and insulted and demeaned.  Not for how she’s been manipulated.  Her feelings continue to be a liability.  The men consider her weak, compromised by the fickle mind and frail temperament of her sex and burdened by her grief for Steve.  She has done _everything_ in her power to show them otherwise, and none of it matters.  And she foolishly believed for a moment that Howard was different, that he could be an actual friend, which she so sorely needs, but she’s been lying to herself.  Howard.  Jarvis.  Sousa.  Dooley.  Thompson.  All of them.

_“The natural order of the universe.  You’re a woman.  No man will ever consider you an equal.”_

_Steve did._

_“The only way to break through the ceiling sometimes is to lie, so that’s my natural instinct: to lie.”_

_You’re wrong.  Steve broke that ceiling.  And he never had to lie or hurt anyone to do it._

No, she’s not going to cry.  Instead she’s going to fight back, because even though she’s lost and shaken, she knows what she’s always known.  She knows Steve.  So she opens her bag and pulls out the hammer she pilfered from one of SSR’s maintenance rooms.  Then she goes at it.  She hits the wall hard, smacking the wallpaper over and over again until the flowers are ripped and defaced.  She hits again and again, a loud _thump thump_ that is like the beat of the song, that is again like her heart, fast and hard and determined.  A few minutes of work rewards her with a hole in the wall, a hole she widens by ripping and shredding.  Dust and debris falls to the floor at her feet like gray snow.  When the gap is sufficiently big and reveals shadowy brick behind it, she reaches into the bag again and finds the pick.  She holds it in her palm, staring a moment, breathing slowly and evenly.  She starts anew, wedging the pick between the mortar and the brick and hitting its head with the hammer until the cement crumbles.  She’s trying not to think, but her mind is still a whirlwind.  Surprisingly, though, as she labors at the wall, she’s not thinking of Howard and his lies.  Or the men at the SSR office.  Her colleagues and supposed peers.  Or the questions she can’t answer.  So disturbing and pressing.  She’s not thinking of any of that.

She’s thinking of Steve.

It was… what?  The spring of 1944, she believes.  SSR had newly pushed HYDRA from Italy and was surging northward toward Germany.  The Allied offensive around Rome had turned in their favor, and a long and difficult winter was over, so morale among the troops was very good.  And when danger disappeared, Peggy found old prejudices always resurfaced.  The ranking officers of SSR returned to their old ways, coldly dismissing her, brushing her aside, downplaying the important role she’d played in the difficult battles they’d so recently won.  Honestly, she can’t even recall right now what was said exactly, but she can so clearly recall how it had cut.  How it had hurt and shamed her.  She remembers stalking around SSR’s camp aimlessly, smarting, _fuming_ so completely that she was completely bereft of her normal poise and any plan of reaction, only to run into Steve as he and the others returned from a scouting expedition at a HYDRA factory a few dozen miles north of their current position.  She couldn’t fool him that she was alright.  He took her aside, asked her what was wrong.  She told him (why can’t she even remember what those men had said?).  He smiled that smile he always had for her, and it aggravated her, because she wanted to go back and tell those bastards off for abusing her like they did and that smile reminded her that it wasn’t the right thing to do.  Even if they deserved it.  It wasn’t right.  _“You know it’s not worth it, Peg.”_

_“It would feel bloody good, though.”_

He laughed.  _“Maybe.  But you know what’ll feel better?”_

_“Do enlighten me, Captain.”_

_“One day, when all of this is over, you can be proud of the fact that they’ll see the truth.”_

_“What truth?”_

_“That you’re the one carrying all of us.  And you always have been.”_

She sighs.  She cannot fathom at times how the world could be so cruel.  Steve only ever saw the best in people, but there is evil.  Peggy knows that.  There is so much evil, and the worst evil of all comes in the form of betrayal, of shattered friendship and broken trust.  And she feels betrayed even more than she feels used.  Betrayed by Howard.  By the men of SSR who were supposed to have been her colleagues rather than her critics.  By the people all around her, with their ridiculous desire for lies and propaganda, for Betty Carver and the Captain America Adventure Hour.  _Betrayed._   And what hope do any of them have against those who are outwardly evil, those who truly mean the world violent and vicious harm, when one cannot trust those one has taken for allies?

_“What the hell do you think of me?”_

_I think you’re a liar, Howard, and a traitor.  And I think if you really claim that Steve means something to you, you wouldn’t have done what you did.  You_ couldn’t _have done what you did.  You dishonor him._ Steve wanted to help people, was willing to die for his country, for the world, but he never, _ever_ wanted to be used.  Not as a weapon.  Not as a tool.  Not as a symbol.  His blood.  His name.  His image.  _Captain America._ All of that now, fodder for the government, for a society trying to redefine itself, for SSR and Stark Industries.  He would have never wanted that.

She’s going to make damn sure it doesn’t happen.  Her own angry voice fills her head again, strong and true.  _“Steve Rogers dedicated his mind, his body, his life to the SSR, to this country, not to your bank account.  I made the same pledge, but I’m not as good as Steve was.  I forgot my pledge, running around for you like a corporate spy.  So thank you, Howard, for reminding me of who Steve was and who I aspire to be.”_   She meant every word.  _Every word._   She’s never going to forget it.  Not who Steve was or what he did.  Not what he means to her.  She’s never going to be so weak or so desperate as to trust blindly like she did.  And she’s never going to let herself be used again.

The music quiets.  She’s calm now.  Cool.  Her heart is slow, unbothered, and she breathes easily, like the soft _swish_ of the cymbals.  She pulls the brick out.  It’s loose enough after chipping away the cement that it comes easy.  It’s rough and coarse to her fingertips, scratching, but she manages a decent grip.  There’s enough space there, she thinks, so she lifts her bag.  Inside is the Blitzkrieg Button, its dull sheen catching the paltry light so that it appears almost gold.  She considers looking inside for a moment, but she decides against it.  Instead she puts it inside the wall, hidden in the shadows, and replaces the brick.  The vial of Steve’s blood, the _last_ vial of his blood, is safe in there.  She knows it is.  And she knows it will be safe here, in her room, safe with her.  Safe because she’ll watch over it.  Tirelessly.  Like a sentinel, if that’s what she has to be.  Maybe that vial of blood is worth millions of dollars to the US government and SSR and Howard.  Maybe it’s priceless, invaluable.

But so is her love for Steve.  That’s worth everything to her.  And if she’s the only one protecting Steve’s legacy, then so be it.  She trusts herself to do it.  Steve trusted her.  _Steve trusted me._

**THE END**


End file.
